The United States and other countries can continue to move into the twenty-first century in an incremental way and let changing conditions shape their perceptions and actions. If this happens, the breakdown in world order that I describe here could unfold. As modernizing nations narrow the gap separating them from advanced ones, and as dangerous technologies spread, world peace and security in a few decades will be at risk if there have been no advances in the resolution of disputes. To avoid this future, the world needs to begin to think about international security in the same long-term way that it is now beginning to think about climate and the environment.
Americans are accustomed to see national and international security over a relatively short timeframe. Some threats, such as the spread of mass-casualty weapons, are understood to be a long-term danger. But planning of U.S. foreign and defense policy tends to be limited to intervals of four years. The time beyond is indefinite or open-ended. Although serving the needs of four-year presidencies, this outlook is rooted more deeply in the last half century of American assumptions about the world.
During the Cold War, the security strategy of the United States was to maintain a basic status quo through a long and indefinite period. Americans today still tend to think of long-term strategy in terms of basic commitments that must be sustained over indefinite periods of time. While this way of thinking is still relevant to some problems, it is not the only approach conceivable. The present dilemmas in U.S. strategy proceed from the tendency of commitments to become long and vague when they cannot be achieved as engagements that are specific and short.
Instead of giving priority just to shorter-term concerns, America needs to plan in a more serious way for its position in the middle decades of the twenty-first century. It will be a departure for the United States to anticipate conditions that are not open-ended but that are still several decades from full realization. But public debate about this future can begin now. This can begin as an initiative in what is usually termed public diplomacy.
Since the events of 2001, America has made a modest effort through public diplomacy to improve understanding and support for itself abroad. This effort has been faulted for its treatment of other peoples as mere consumers of American-supplied information to the neglect of substantive differences that other societies have with America over U.S. policy. But in a deeper sense, this criticism is beside the point. The focus of U.S. outreach to public opinion abroad should not be on how others relate to America but on how everyone relates to difficult problems that are common to all. The United States needs to challenge other peoples with substantive choices that Americans must also summon the will to make.
For America, the key to working with other countries is not to embrace their current perceptions regarding world order. Nor is the key to require others to embrace U.S. perceptions. The key is for the United States to challenge the perceptions of everyone by offering a vision defined by steps that the United States and other nations can take together.
These steps need not be defined in ambitious terms right away. It will be enough if the United States begins to debate other countries on the premise of a more equal world by the middle of this century. In doing so, the American goal should be to challenge other nations to articulate a vision in such a world of the security responsibilities that all nations will have in the latter half of the century.
Sooner or later, the specifics of a more sustainable security order will need to be proposed and discussed. But before then, public opinion must accept the need to debate global security on the same timescale that it is beginning to debate the needs of the global environment. The challenge to U.S. foreign policy is to begin to encourage thinking about security on such a timescale.